


Put Away Your Courage

by OhAine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A little bit of fluff, A lot of introspection, Established Relationship, F/M, Marriage Proposal, Sherlolly - Freeform, a little bit of romance, brief mentions of past relationships with Irene and Tom, mollock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 21:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18859834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhAine/pseuds/OhAine
Summary: “Are you—?”Blink.“You’reproposing?”





	Put Away Your Courage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glitterkitty4ever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterkitty4ever/gifts).



> A much overdue birthday gift for you Lorianna, so sorry I'm late. I hope you like it xx
> 
> Title is taken from Leonard Cohen's 'Unbecoming.'
> 
> Unbeta'd, I own nothing but the typos.
> 
> Warning: brief mention of past drug use.

Seven oh two on a cold, bright spring morning is the moment Sherlock realises that the feeling in his chest – the one very much like a firework primed to explode – is more than just the love he feels for Molly Hooper.

Across from him she sits at his kitchen table, mostly hidden by the morning paper: toes curled around the edge of her seat, bare knee resting against the chipped formica as it pokes through the opening of what was once his dressing gown. Her glasses are shoved into her hair, and at the corner of her mouth there are crumbs left behind by the toast she had for breakfast. If he kissed her now her lips would be salty from butter, sweet from tea. 

Beneath his sternum the firework ignites. Sparks lighting up the night sky of his thoughts with just these words:  _marry me_.

He gasps, or something like it, a small noise carried on no more than a gentle puff of air from the winding words that are filling his head and heart.

Molly glances at him over the top of her paper. Her eyes narrow, her pressed tight lips twist down. Anyone might mistake it for vexation. But he – who, after all, is well versed in the ways of Miss Hooper – takes it for what it is, a sort of puzzled concern. 

“Why are you giving me that look?” she asks. 

“What look? There’s no look.”  _In fact there is a look, a very strange one at that._

She rubs the back of her hand over her chin. “Have I got something on my face?”

“Uh…crumbs.” Sherlock says, pitched rather more like a question than a statement of fact, but one that has the benefit of allowing him to rise from where he sits and softly kiss her. This method of distraction has the added advantages of 1) silencing the subject, and 2) confirming his hypothesis that she does in fact taste delicious. Still. There’s a knot forming in his stomach, a big one, and difficult as it is to force his arms not to hold her he mutters something about Lestrade and a case (poor choice of excuse, he immediately realises, but it’s out before he can come up with something better), making his way to the door in a series of half-aborted turns and back-steps that cause Molly to put down her newspaper and frown in his general direction.

As he flings his limbs into his coat Sherlock catches sight of himself in the mirror over the fireplace and tries to ignore the deductions that appear in bold Verdana, floating around him.

_Liar,_  says one,  _terrified_ says another. 

_Coward,_  says the last.

Sherlock heaves a long-suffering sigh, gives his reflection one sharp reproachful look and clatters down the stairs.

*

He passes the morning by walking.

It’s early yet, and London is crystal clear in what will probably be the last spring chill. The sun, still low in the very bluest of skies, causes spots in his vision as he heads down Gower Street towards the embankment where he sits on a bench and thinks.

Marriage is almost laughably irrelevant. It is an antiquated institution, misogynistic on the face of it, and came into existence for the sole purpose of controlling wealth. A woman might be traded between men at the altar as though she were little more than a used van with good mileage. Therefore marriage (even in the modern sense) is transactional, and in truth Sherlock has very little that he can use by way of currency: Molly owns her own flat, just as one day, Mrs Hudson assures him, he will own his. Both their names are on the title of the weekend cottage in Sussex. He has a comfortable income, but so does she. They are materially equal.  

They will never have children, and consequently there are no parental rights to be gained through matrimony. There will never be confusion over hyphenation, or decisions to be made about whether it’s safe to use his surname at all, no questions asked at some imaginary school gate.

Neither one is religious. And though Molly believes in God, religion to her is belief only in a nebulous sense that has something to do with positive childhood association and nothing at all to do with vengeance or punishment for the crime of sharing a bed without sharing a name. They already (mostly) live together, and she doesn’t regard it as sinful.  _Well,_  he smiles to himself,  _maybe that thing they did last Thursday night was wicked._ But sinful?  _No._

Even if he had something to offer he isn’t so sure that marriage is something Molly would want. An objective examination of the evidence begins thusly:

Molly is a beautiful woman who has never had a shortage of suitors, many of whom society would consider to be a ‘good catch,’ at least one of whom proposed. Molly has been engaged, and yet did not marry the man she accepted. In their almost two years together, Molly has never once raised the subject of marriage. Nor has she, to the best of his knowledge, given it more than a moment’s passing thought.

Fact: Molly is a realist who understands his disdain for the institution in general yet elects to be with him anyway. 

Fact: Never once has she regretted that choice. 

He sets off again, walking for hours, his mind a snake devouring its own tail. Sherlock’s feet carry him along the neat paths of riversides and parks until they bleed again into the many-eyed city streets. As evening draws in, he heads for Baker Street and the stash of cigarettes that he keeps hidden behind the bison skull (just out of Molly’s and Mrs Hudson’s reach, and therefore still undiscovered by both) because right now he needs something to steady his shaking hands and there’s not a single shop in a five mile radius who’ll sell him a pack of Marlboro’s. 

It’s his own fault, of course, that there’s any doubt about what Molly might want. There have been wounds, you see, deep and irretrievable ones over many years. There was never a question that she forgave the ones he inflicted on her (well, perhaps in his mind, but never in hers) meaning the ones that have done the profoundest damage are the ones he caused to be inflicted on himself.

The silvered topography of his back was created by two very different people: Irene, who loved him, and a Serbian mercenary who did not. There’s a rope burn on his inner right wrist that’s never quite healed. A lower right quadrant appendectomy scar which, in reality, isn’t that at all. One on his lip from an exploding beaker in his first year of chemistry at Oxford. To the right of his midline there’s a rose coloured depression, fashioned by a bullet from his friend’s gun. There are countless more, not made of flesh but memory. 

And then the deepest one of all.  

Molly has a list, a safety routine that she runs quietly in her mind. He pretends not to notice when her eyes linger just a little too long on the crooks of his elbows, his forearms, or when her tidying up is patently more than that.

Sometimes he wonders if the reason she let him stay at hers while 221B was refurbished after his sister’s grenade was so that she could keep a closer eye on him. All logic had failed him after Mary then Eurus, and all he’d been left with was faith. So he had given himself completely, because there was no way to be with Molly Hooper  _except_  completely. And though he doesn’t question the truth of what they both felt that first night when it seemed impossible to sleep in a bed that wasn’t hers for even one second longer, sometimes he wonders how much of a choice he really gave her, how much of a chance did she have to get out from under her feelings for him and live her life without the spectre of Sherlock Holmes at her heel. 

There’s an argument to be made for it: for years, before they became lovers, though he couldn’t allow himself to have her he could never bring himself to allow anyone else to either. Nothing obvious, he’s too clever for that, but there were looks that lingered, smouldering with blatant seduction, or an inflection in his voice that gave her just enough to hope, but not enough to know. 

The memories cause Sherlock to stop dead in his tracks, on the corner of a busy street. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and for the duration of two deep breaths pushes the guilt —  _the shame_  — down, down, and reminds himself that those were the bad times, before the  _very_  bad times came. 

Before a forced truth.

Before Molly. 

There has never been anyone like her in his life. She is his entire world, and yet the world would say she is nothing to him at all. Molly is not his girlfriend. He despises the word for she is neither just a girl nor just a friend.  _She_  despises the term partner, they are not accountants, or solicitors. She is his  _something_ , even if there’s no name for it. But he does not possess her. Marriage would make her his wife. A definable relationship to him, one tacitly understood by all. No need for a tattoo of his name across her forehead declaring ownership. Civilised animals that they are, a ring is as close as society permits and, he concedes, it does an adequate job of conveying the same message. Another idea persists: the claim is a bilateral one, he would be owned every bit as much as she, and frankly he wouldn’t care –  _not one jot_ – if Molly Hooper were to brand him as hers. In fact, he finds that idea to be more than agreeable.  _He_  would belong to  _her_ and everyone would know.

They would be one. 

They would stand before their friends and family and declare a unity that somehow co-habitation fails to convey. For reasons that he has never understood, a marriage licence is a relic, a magical object imbued with more power than any mere piece of paper should ever hold.

He has no idea how long Molly has felt for him what she feels, only that  _he_  has felt what he does for  _her_  since before he knew what it even meant. It’s not tentative, not in the least, but part of him will always believe he doesn’t deserve her. Part of him will always know he wouldn’t survive her loss. The unacknowledged truth of it is that Mycroft was right, caring is not an advantage. It makes him uncertain in a way he’s never been in any other situation. It makes him vulnerable. And though he trusts her with his life, it’s hard, sometimes still, to trust her with his heart, and so the upper hand will never be his. 

This leads him to another thought: is this magnificent desire to keep her only unto him some latent act of duplicity? Not an expression of confidence in their future, instead a betrayal of the insecurities he has about their past? Is it an attempt to have her promise to never leave? A legally binding contract that insinuates itself between them in matters of the heart where no question of legality should ever exist? He thinks of his lepidopterological specimens back at the flat, things of beauty, winged creatures made to be free, pinned and trapped beneath glass so that he might possess them.

Over London the light of another day begins to die. Sherlock looks heavenward to the amber streaked sky, indigo and starlit at the edges and asks a deity that he doesn’t believe in whether what they have is enough. It’s his nature to push too hard, to want too much. More. Sooner. Now. Those words his lifelong axiom. Maybe it’s time to learn patience, to know when not to push his luck. She is his, for now. He’ll sleep in her arms tonight. He’ll kiss her sweetly in the morning. He’ll complain about Toby’s fur getting on his clothes. She’ll frown when he refuses to dust. They’ll argue over whose turn it is to pick where they go for dinner. She’ll cry out his name in the heat of their lovemaking: he’ll die a thousand times just to hear it. And so if God is silent he’ll still have his answer.

He has something that he never asked for, given to him in exactly the way he would have wanted it. _Why would he ask for everything when he already has so much?_

By now his legs have begun to ache, and belatedly he realises why. Without meaning to he’s walked all the way to Bart’s, bypassing Baker Street entirely. The old pathology building, covered in scaffolding for a long overdue refit, is in dappled darkness. Sherlock stands for a moment, strangely melancholic, and looks up to the window where Molly had once thrown a body into the street below, saving his life and that of his friends. 

Never once did she doubt him.

Never once did he doubt her.

A gentle hand touches his shoulder blade, startles him, lost as he is in thought. Molly looks up at him and smiles, her pretty face already glowing from the velvet textured evening frost, her eyes sparkling in a way that Sherlock fancies is just for him.

“Come to walk me home?”

She steps closer, nudges him, and he offers her his arm. Molly grips it with one pink mitten clad hand.

He says, “Thought we could stop at Angelo’s for dinner.” 

“Or there’s that new Thai place on Keppel Street I’ve wanted to try?”

“Except it’s my turn. You picked last time.”

“I did not!”

“It’s shocking that I’m considered to be the morally deficient one in this relationship when you clearly hold only the most tenuous of grasps on the concept of truth. I’m going to start recording our conversations if you’re going to resort to lies to get your own way.”

“No need. I’m doing that already. Mycroft gave me access to his surveillance equipment when I first started staying over at yours.”

“I’m a private citizen, he can’t spy on me without reasonable cause.”

“He’s the British Government. I thought he could do whatever he liked?”

The corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches ever so slightly. “That’s exactly what he wants you to think.”

Molly leans into him, snorts a laugh that’s both undignified and charming.

Without Sherlock conceding defeat they head off toward Keppel Street in a companionable sort of silence. The words that have been swelling in his throat all day throb a little painfully, lodged there like shameful things, hidden in the dark. _They hurt more than he could ever have imagined they would._

“I bought a dress a while ago,” Molly says apropos of nothing as they find themselves alone on a quiet side street half a mile or so later. “Fifty percent off in the January sales. It was still bloomin’ expensive though. It’s really beautiful. Tea length. Sort of a floofy lace whathaveyou with beading.” 

Sherlock side-eyes her, searching for the most diplomatic answer, because – though he finds her odd sense of fashion ever so endearing – he still has to be careful not to inadvertently offend when it comes to the very singular way in which Molly expresses herself sartorially. 

“Sssssounds…  _nice?”_ he ventures, raising one eyebrow in question.

“It is. It’s red, but then that’s traditional in some cultures isn’t it? Not that I’m trying to appropriate anyone’s culture or anything. Just saying that it doesn’t matter what colour it is, you can wear what you like these days. Besides, I don’t think I’d get away with white,  _especially_  not after that thing we did last Thursday night. Pretty sure that was the last of my token virginities to go, so... And we do live together, so the cat’s out of the bag about my not being a virgin in all the traditional ways too. You as well for that matter. Even though I don’t think anyone except John and Mycroft really believed the whole married to your work thing. Although, yes, you sort of were, but not really, you can’t have been if you know how to do that thing you did on Thursday – you had to have picked  _that_  up somewhere else because goodness knows you didn’t learn it from me. Anyway. Doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is definitely not white.”

He stops dead in his tracks, taken completely by surprise. Molly turns to face him, breathing out a shaky little puff of air. 

“We can do it quietly,” she says. “No fuss, just the two of us if that’s what you’d prefer. Or John could stand up with you. Mind you, Rosie would love to be a flower girl.” Molly scrunches her nose, “Although she’d probably eat the rose petals and get sick everywhere, she’s been shoving everything in her mouth lately. I thought she’d grown out of that phase ages ago. Apparently not. Maybe a flowerless-flower girl? Can you have those? A-And there doesn’t even have to be rings if you don’t want them. No one has to know, if you’d rather they didn’t. We’d know, that would be enough.”

Sherlock blinks at her, eyelashes fluttering wildly. “Are you—?”  _Blink_. “You’re  _proposing?”_

“Thought I’d save you the trouble.”

“Oh for God’s sake.” He peers at her. _“How_ — _?”_

“It’s been building for weeks. Then this morning…” the end of her sentence falls off a precipice. Her expression is both soft and serious. “Look. Chances are you’ve spent all day torturing yourself about the right thing to do, and if I hadn’t said something you’d’ve carried on like that for weeks. You’d be sad and miserable for no reason at all. So I’m going to make it easy for you. I want to be married. Specifically, to you. I don’t have to be, but I do want to. And I think you do too.”

She pokes out her defiant little chin and nods in a manner that says,  _There we have it._

He looks at her then, as they stand there in the empty street.  _Truly looks at her_. There is starlight in her eyes, and glitter on her lashes from yesterday when Rosie and she made cardboard fairy wings. Her lips are pink, her cheeks are glowing. She is stupidly short, ridiculously beautiful. There is not one bone in her body that he doesn’t love more than he loves anything else on this earth.

And she loves him too.

Finally.  _Finally_  he understands: when the one person that you want to spend the rest of your life with tells you that they want to spend the rest of theirs with you too, you say yes. In the end, it’s as simple as that.

Beneath the canopy of street lights that hang over them like stars Sherlock takes her in his arms, holds her so very tight, pressing his lips against her hair. He can’t speak, not just yet, because the lump in his throat can’t be swallowed down and suddenly his eyes sting. His heart – traitorous and fearful little thing that it is – hammers against his ribcage causing his breath to come short. 

Molly’s hands under his coat are warm and light on his back. Her breath on his neck is moist and impossibly soft. His whole world narrows down to its rhythm and he lets her love wash over him, rain down upon him. 

“Rings are good,” he says eventually. The words don’t come easily for him, but they come. The time for hiding is over. “And there should be cake. Bugger all point in doing the wedding thing if there isn’t cake. The rest is up to you.”

“Okay,” Molly says, only that, letting it sit in the air a moment or two. She rises up on to the tips of her toes, her breath in his mouth fanning to life the embers of firework still hot beneath his breast, and kisses him in a way that’s extravagantly tender. When it ends the feeling lingers on his lips, delicate, just as she is. 

Sherlock stands there, struck mute by her kindness. With no idea what to do next he waits — a little time passes before Molly takes his arm again and they carry on, heading north. Neither one of them speak as they cover the last mile or so to dinner, yet something in the silence is joyful. It’s silly, he knows, but he pulls the mitten from Molly’s hand so that he can take hers in his. 

As they walk he thinks how odd it seems that it’s so much easier to be fearless when he can touch her, hold her, skin to skin.

**Author's Note:**

> Much love and thanks to [Molly_Holmes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly_Holmes/pseuds/Molly_Holmes/works) who made a mood board (collage? aesthetic?) for this fic. You can find it [here.](https://theunsinkablemollyholmes.tumblr.com/post/185108156441/he-looks-at-her-then-as-they-stand-there-in-the)


End file.
